Born on the Island
by backdrifter
Summary: Miles comes across Claire in the jungle after one flash, and in the past we learn about a man we’ve heard a lot about, as well as things about Miles’ past he doesn’t know but gets strange sensations about. Claire/Miles Ben/Annie Radinsky/Red Haired Girl
1. Part I

**Part 1**

I thought about pretending I'd strangled it with my own hands but decided against it. Lying for the point of lying isn't very clever when you're living with so many paranoid people. I've decided that a policy of telling the truth – not just not lying – is the best way to go. There might be things that are unavoidable or unnecessary, of course. There's no point in frightening people.

I probably shouldn't have asked the hick and the Aussie chick about Karl and Danielle. I feel bad about showing those bodies to Claire. Even Sawyer didn't like it, and he acts like he's such a big boy. I couldn't help it though. It just hit me. The fear and the violence. I could hear echoes of it, and smelt it, oh god, smelt it, that familiar stench of blood – the metallic smell, that's so much stronger than it is when I get senses like that than it is first hand. It fills my head up, makes things foggy.

There's no point in upsetting people with stuff like that. They get annoying. Besides, it's when you come up with things like that that gets you burned at the stake, isn't it? People hardly batted an eyelid when I brought that boar back. They noticed something odd, of course, but they're so used to freaky-deaky stuff happening on this island that as long as it don't bite or it ain't a dead human they're alright with it. And food's food, right? There's no arguing with that.

I don't know if I'll be able to stop myself though. It fills every sense, and your emotions, something that horrible, something that devastating. Death leads an imprint on a place, but murder, and suicide, leaves a great big flashing neon sign, saying "Violent end here. Free admissions. My cause nausea."

And then you want to know. You want to know what happened, you want to ask questions. I used to get a lot of flack for that. "Questions, questions, questions." I heard that a lot. Too many questions, Miles.

Right now, the question is, who are these frickin' people shooting burning arrows at us? I don't want to end up like those bodies I found, the boy and the French chick. I wont, they were shot. I be burnt up instead. Now, that'd be stinky. I don't want to be burnt. I run faster. I'd been starting to lag. There's a stabbing sensation in my chest. Then I realise that I can't see anyone else and that I don't know how long I've been running. Seconds or minutes? More than ten.

Then that sound comes again, and that light, and I feel like my whole body is being squished into one tiny space and stretched out over space at the same time, and then it's daytime, and I'm back, when? The future. I know the camp will be there, and no arrow people. I start walking back the way I came, and then something catches my eye. I double take and then my foot catches on my a root and I fall over flat on my face.

I groan and say "Just my luck," before I remember what I saw, and look over at her. Claire lies on the jungle floor fast asleep, a few strands of blond hair falling over her face and looking like an angel. I wonder how someone so sweet and innocent looking could leave her baby? How could anyone leave their baby?

I crouch on the floor a few metres away and watch her, remembering what Sawyer said. Ok, he's not around, but I wouldn't know what to do anyway. And I didn't want to wake her – she looked so peaceful. He said not to look her either, but what's the harm in watching to see she's still breathing. I sit there for quite a while, watching her stomach rise and fall, becoming mesmerised by the movement of it. I drift off into a trance and become more relaxed than I remember being in years.

Then she opens her eyes and sees me. She doesn't panic, but looks at me quizzically.

"I'm not allowed to touch you," I explain apologetically.

"That's silly," she says as she stretches. Her accent sends tingles down my spine.


	2. Part II

**Part 2**

"Psst, Annie!"

Annie looked up from her homework and over at the window. It was open, but she couldn't see anything. She got up and walked over to it.

"Sasha?" she whispered, recognizing the voice with the slight Russian accent straight away. "Sasha where are you?"

She heard a tapping noise and looked down. There in the bush below the window crouched a dark haired boy with a pair of lopsided red lips grinning up at her.

The day Benjamin Linus arrived Sasha stole Annie away from her homework at the risk of getting her into trouble to go and stare at the new arrivals. Sasha was banned from talking to them, on account of his incessant questions – why are you here? What do you know about what you're going to do? – the usually shy boy driven by his curiosity to approach strangers and make them nervous when they realised how little they actually knew about the Dharma Initiative.

* * *

They'd sat watching with a pair of binoculars from the shore, hidden in a tree with their legs dangling down into the air. They passed the binoculars back and forth commenting on the emerging people and guessing at them. It was Annie who saw the boy their age. She got excited and thrust the binoculars into Sasha's hand, saying how nervous he looked and how they should go and welcome him.

"I can't, remember," Sasha said, and then he looked at Ben and saw that he did indeed look nervous, and even a little sad, but he couldn't help but not like it when Annie said that maybe she should go alone.

His mouth wasn't lopsided when he felt he should do something too and gave Annie the Apollo bar, the bar that he had meant for the two of them to share, to give to Ben, because it was only lopsided when he smiled. To be more precise it sat symmetrically and solemnly in the middle of his rather serious face, a red bar on a white canvas framed in neatly cut black. Neither was it wasn't lopsided when he forced a smile at Annie as he said to say hello from him, but Annie didn't notice like she usually would (and she was one of the few who knew the difference between a real smile and a fake smile from Sasha), because she was thinking about the lonely looking boy on the jetty.

He chose to stay in the tree and watched as Annie slipped down to the ground and skipped off towards the hall where they newcomers were always registered. Annie, warmhearted, curious girl, forgot about Sasha and felt immediate warmth towards this timid boy. His shyness was different from Sasha's, who wasn't shy at all with Annie, and many of those he knew on the island. The small island community suited him and in it he could be confident, though he still wasn't particularly sociable in large groups.

When Sasha jumped down from the tree and wandered back towards the village he saw Annie coming out of a building with Ben, though he didn't know this was the boy's name yet. Sasha felt resentment well up inside of him; Annie was _his_ friend! He was an only child and used to getting every drop of his father's love to himself, and he liked something similar with his friends. He changed his trajectory and made his way to the Chang's house; to a scene that he knew would warm his heart.

Since arriving on the island Sasha had been welcomed wholeheartedly into the home of the Changs. Lara pampered him and listened to his stories, and let him lie on the couch with his feet on the cushions and his head on her lap, which was always covered in a pretty dress of the kind he thought mothers should always wear, and put his pictures up on the fridge with magnets, while Pierre would call him to his office which seemed such a serious and important place – full of knowledge and work – to talk to him like he really appreciated it, and let him tag along on his heels on his pre dinner walks.

They both insisted on him calling them "Lara" and "Pierre", like he was a real grownup, instead of insisting on "Mr" or "Aunty" and all those kinds of names – why should he have to call a person he wasn't related to in the slightest "Uncle"? And why should she be "Mrs" and he be plain old "Sasha", or even "Son", when he certainly wasn't anyone's son but his father's. But, anyway.

Now there was a new arrival in the house, one that might have made him feel pushed out of the house after having such attention lavished on him, but Sasha felt a kinship with little Miles, who'd be four days old that day. He felt responsible, like an elder brother might, and yesterday Lara had let him hold him, gently lowering Miles onto his lap as he held his arms ready to cradle him. He sat there in silence some fifteen minutes – a miracle for a ten year old – and his smile was so lopsided you'd think it was a Picasso if you saw it.


	3. Part III

**Part 3**

When I wake up I have a crick in my neck, but before I get round to stretching I see that Miles person sitting on his haunches watching me.

"I'm not allowed to touch you," he apologises.

Miles is strange. He makes me uncomfortable. What with that thing in the jungle with the bodies… it makes me sick just to think of it. I cover it by stretching and saying "that's silly," because it is silly, really silly. Boys and their machismo. Sawyer's got too much of it. But so does Jack and Locke, too. I wish they'd all just grow up. Even Dad…

"Sorry I disappeared on you like that," I say. "I had to go somewhere."

I hope he doesn't ask too many questions. I'd rather not have to explain.

"Why did you leave the baby with us?" Miles says. That's not the question I expected. The first questions I expected were "where?" and "why?", "to do what?"

"He said Aaron would be safer where he was," I reply awkwardly. I look away as I say it, now he's mentioned Aaron. Leaving him there like that under any circumstances makes me feel horrible.

"Who, your dad?" he asks.

"Yeah, I… how…?"

"I saw you call him 'Dad'."

He saw us talking? At least I know I'm not seeing things now – he was really there.

"You didn't say anything?" I ask.

"Not allowed, remember?"

I still haven't been able to look at him, and am staring off into the distance. I can't look him in the eye. He's asking me about Dad, about Christian, but all I can think about is Aaron. I wonder if he notices anything. Of all people I don't want to be having this conversation with him, a stranger. And his questions are so insistent, there's something so penetrating about the way he asks them. But now he hasn't said anything for more than a minute and I wish he would just say anything. But when he does say something it's weird again, like with Rousseau.

"Did you, uh… the flashes?"

I look at him, blinking with my mouth open.

"What?"

But again Aaron rushes back into my mind though I'm afraid of thinking about him.

* * *

**A/N**

**I definately think Miles is Chang's son. I desperately want him to be Chang's son. And it's SUCH a disappointment that Claire's gone AWOL. No more Miles/Claire interactions...  
**

**I think I should say now that there'll be more of a focus of on the history of the island than what's happening now in the show. It's more fun and it gives me more freedom. Saying that, I'm going to follow what's happening in the show as much as I can/want. Miles' sarkiness in reaction to Daniel/Charlotte (eurgh, her sappy expressions make me sick) is too good to resist.  
**


End file.
